


Shells

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 10 Blacksand Kinkmeme Fics [14]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, as we all know death in this canon is...fuzzy, from Jack to Sandy, not major character death but not NOT major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22488514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "When Sandy dies in the fight, he remains dead. There is no coming back, no reviving of a guardian that has been around. The golden sand is restored, but only long enough to shoo the nightmares away- then it vanishes.It isn’t until several months later does anybody hear the rumors of the new being with golden sand spreading dreams. The Guardians, excited, go to check it out, hoping that somehow Sandy survived. Nope. Sandy’s been replaced. and this person is similar to Sandy, but still different, and it’s just cutting open wounds in each of the Guardian’s hearts.It takes a long time for them to accept this new being that has replaced Sandy… and neither side is having an easy time in figuring out what their doing.tl;dr: Sandy remains dead, and there’s lots of healing that comes after it, even with struggles with the new Sandman replacing him"Several thousand years ago, Sandy made provisions for his death. The other Guardians meet him, and the new Sandman realizes there’s at least one more loose end to take care of. He wasn’t the only one to make the provisions against death that he did. He asks Jack to come with him, and it’s not really a fun time for Jack.
Relationships: Jack Frost/Sanderson Mansnoozie, Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie
Series: My Top 10 Blacksand Kinkmeme Fics [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654639
Kudos: 7
Collections: Blacksand Short Fics, Cold Gold Short Fics





	Shells

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 8/24/2015.

“I’m sorry,” says the being in their midst. “Sandy made provisions for his?—was that proper when you knew him?—death several thousand years ago. I don’t know or remember any of you.” The being—the Sandman, this must be the Sandman now—has a soft, sweet, voice, like gentle chimes in a warm summer breeze. It’s beautiful, but it’s hard to think about that when it’s so jarring to hear the Sandman speak in the first place.  
  
There’s no mistaking who he is. Threads of golden dreamsand drift slowly around him, ebbing and flowing as they disappear to wherever dreamers need them. The Sandman had apologized for this distraction, as well, mentioning that Sandy must have figured out how to avoid doing sending dreams so obviously, when the other Guardians had looked puzzled.  
  
“What’s right for you, then?” Bunny asks.  
  
The Sandman smiles kindly at Bunny and the others. “I was never meant to be too much of a change. ‘He’ is fine.” Bunny nods, and another silence follows.  
  
Even aside from the dreamsand, this Sandman is recognizable as somehow related to the Sandy they knew. He is still short, and plump, with a broad, smooth-skinned face and hair that sticks up. Yet this Sandman has proportions far closer to the human than the Sandy they knew—longer limbs, larger hands and feet. His eyebrows are more noticeable and his hair doesn’t spike, appearing instead as a tall halo of tight golden curls. His skin is a darker gold, with more shimmer in it than before, and he wears a deeply-cut, wide-sleeved robe that falls to his feet and looks and acts like silk dyed in the reds and oranges of a sunset.  
  
Jack can’t look at his face, so much like Sandy’s, but just that much more human. Half his mind fills with questions he can no longer ask, and the other half fills with questions he could ask, but he cannot bear to speak to the new Sandman, the only one who could answer. This new Sandman, he—he’s not the one who gave Jack dreams when he was alone, he’s not the one who waved at him from his cloud, he’s not the one who laughed silently when Jack froze an elf just before he became a Guardian. He’s not the one who played with all of them as they collected the teeth.  
  
“You are bringing the dreams like Sandy did?” North asks. “Is there anything you want to ask us as a group? Otherwise, I think perhaps it might be easier for us to make introductions one by one.”  
  
The Sandman nods. “I understand. I know that this must be strange—it’s strange for me, too. To find so many other beings like me—I remember only one other.” He looks solemn. “That will no doubt be the most difficult meeting of all, when I find them. But, before I go anywhere, I do have one question. I know that the Sandy you knew must be dead, because I know that I would otherwise not be here. When Sandy considered the thought that he might die, he—I—also decided that this must not happen. So he separated a portion of his spirit from himself—himself entirely in miniature, all memories, all emotions, all thoughts—and sealed it, to sleep, in a shell of dreamsand. Now, mortals must dream, and they must have dreamsand. If Sandy died, the dreamsand would no longer be replenished from himself, and sleepers’ minds would take it from my shell. That is how I came to be, and how I—well—hatched.” He smiles when Bunny, out of all them, nods as if this is perfectly comprehensible. “So, though I know that Sandy is dead, I don’t know how it happened. And that is my question: how did Sandy die?”  
  
The Guardians look at each other, save for Jack, who stares at the ground. Tooth puts her hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Pitch killed Sandy. He shot him in the back with an arrow of corrupted dreamsand.”  
  
“Pitch?” The Sandman sounds confused.  
  
“The boogeyman,” Tooth clarifies. “Pitch Black.” She frowns. “He’s very old, surely you must have heard of him? He and Sandy—I mean, I don’t know, but the feud between dreams and nightmares seemed very personal and ancient.”  
  
The Sandman frowns and blinks rapidly. “Might he have been known at one time as the fearbringer?”  
  
“It would fit him,” Tooth says, “though I never heard that name.”  
  
He nods slowly. “What of the corrupted dreamsand? Does Pitch still control it? What happened to Sandy’s body?”  
  
Tooth glances to Jack, but it seems he still doesn’t want to talk. “Sandy was…and this is only what it looked like, what really happened may have been different…Sandy was turned from gold to black, and afterwards he became part of a formless wave of black sand. Part of this sand was scattered, part of it was formed into Pitch’s nightmares—black sand horses. And Pitch—well, he doesn’t control this sand anymore. Neither I nor any of my fairies have seen any black sand or nightmares since the nightmares dragged Pitch down into his lair. They sensed his fear, and then…”  
  
“I may need to go to Pitch’s lair,” the Sandman says.  
  
“It’s gone.” Jack finally speaks. “The entrance was under a bed, and the bed is gone and there’s only blank earth where the hole was.”  
  
The Sandman’s eyes widen. “Then Pitch is dead, too!”  
  
The others look at each other in surprise. “You’re sure about that?” Bunny says.  
  
“Surely that is impossible,” North says.  
  
“We just needed to stop him,” says Tooth. “If he hadn’t directly attacked us…”  
  
She trails off as the Sandman raises his hand. He turns to Jack. “Will you take me to where the entrance used to be?”  
  


* * *

  
  
Jack watches as the Sandman crouches down and thumps the bare ground with his fist. He tilts his head as if listening for something, and, though Jack doesn’t hear anything, after a moment or two, he nods in satisfaction. Then, he sits down cross-legged on the grass and his face breaks into a wide, relieved smile.  
  
“He’s gone, then? You’re glad?” Jack asks.  
  
The Sandman laughs a little, then a little more, until his laughter rings through the night. Jack can tell it’s infectious, but all he can manage is a small smile.  
  
“Ah,” Sandman sighs. “The Pitch you knew is dead, yes, and I _am_ glad, because I would have had no idea where to even start! Oh, Jack. Pitch could kill Sandy with the corrupted dreamsand, but did he realize how uncontrollable it would be once Sandy himself was part of it? How powerful? Of course it would have had the power to kill him. And I—I am so relieved that it did, because thousands of years change so much, and for the hate between them to have grown so bitter…hmm. How? And why? I suppose I will just have to not care, no one can answer now.”  
  
“I’m glad he’s dead, too,” Jack says harshly. The Sandman turns to him in surprise and finds Jack sitting next to him, hunched over, hiding his face. “I hate him. I would have tried to kill him if he wasn’t dead. He—he killed Sandy, and he laughed, and he thought I would have been willing to join him even _after_.” Jack shudders, and a hoarse sob bursts from his throat. “Does this even make sense? You know you’re here, but you’re not exactly him, and it matters, it matters!” Jack curls in on himself tighter. “I don’t know how to deal with this! I’m the Guardian of Fun, it isn’t—isn’t natural.” His sobs add shaking syllables to this last word. The Sandman places a hand on his back and Jack only cries the harder.  
  
Knowing silence is often right, the Sandman says nothing until Jack is a little calmer.  
  
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” Jack says, wiping the tears from his eyes. “But if anyone should know, it’s you. I…I think I was in love with Sandy. I never told him. He was…I didn’t think we were equals. But then, when I thought I could maybe, really be a Guardian…and the dreamsand came back in the Easter battle…” he draws a shuddery breath. “I was so happy, so hopeful…but Sandy didn’t come back. And now you’re here and you look so much like him but you’re not him and…” Jack groans and presses the heel of his hand against his eye. “And that’s why I’m glad Pitch is dead, I guess.”  
  
The Sandman pats Jack’s back. “You can mourn to me, Jack,” he says. “It would only be right, though it is true, I’m not Sandy. I won’t expect you to call me that, ever, either, if you don’t want to.”  
  
“Thanks,” Jack says with a hiccup.  
  
“There are a few things I want to tell you, in particular, because of what you’ve just told me,” the Sandman says. “And I need to go to Antarctica. Will you come with me?”  
  


* * *

  
  
“What did you want to tell me?” Jack asks, the calm of the dreamsand cloud seeping into his limbs.  
  
Sandy looks away and hides his hands in his sleeves. The air rushing by is frigid, now, and the sea beneath them grows thick with ice. “The being you knew as Pitch Black and that I knew as the fearbringer made similar precautions against his death as I did, and at the same time.”  
  
“So, we have to destroy him before he hatches?” Jack asks. He can’t say he’s totally surprised when the Sandman turns to him with a look of horror.  
  
“No!” he says. “No. When we made those shells…it was only through working together that we were able to seal such complete copies of our own spirits. And in making the shells…well, there would have been no black sand without the process.” He frowns. “Though if Pitch set out to kill Sandy, and he had black sand to do it, I worry what he may have done to his shell. I would never guess him to be suicidal, but reckless, very reckless, he could be. Still. In those days dreamweaver and fearbringer were in balance. And though there were sometimes trials in that balance, we didn’t ever wish to upset it. There were better ways to stabilize things than fighting. It hurts to know that Pitch and Sandy had lost all these ways by the time you knew them. Again, I am glad I don’t have to ask Pitch what happened. The answer would no doubt have broken my heart.”  
  
By now, the dreamsand cloud is descending onto the ice. “When you say ‘balance’,” Jack says, “what exactly do you mean?”  
  
The Sandman gives him a small smile.  
  
Jack raises his eyebrows until they’re almost hitting his hairline. He’s about to say something, when he notices the cloud has landed somewhere quite familiar. The frozen explosion of sand and ice he and Pitch left behind is off to the side, and the Sandman is walking confidently over to the fissure Jack had briefly been trapped in. He tells Sandy about what happened here as they make their way into parts of the fissure Jack hadn’t paid attention to before, and the Sandman nods. “It would make sense, that our shells would draw magic. Their proximity probably helped Pitch find you. Probably helped heal your staff, too. Now, when I awoke I came out here…” he points to a small cave. “And so the fearbringer’s shell should be…”  
  


* * *

  
  
Jack follows the Sandman into a cramped chamber, which contains only a black sphere large enough to hold a person. It glimmers with a dim blue light and makes his skin crawl.  
  
It doesn’t seem to bother the Sandman, though, as he approaches it directly and runs his hands over it gently.  
  
Jack folds his arms over his stomach. He can’t see this. He shouldn’t be here. That sphere holds whatever is left of Pitch and he wants to blast it into oblivion. The Sandman is going to bring _Pitch_ back and doesn’t he need to stop that? But what about balance? He doesn’t care. The question is, what about Sandy, and Sandy’s dead, and Sandy would have never _petted_ that horrible thing in this cave. But what about Sandy? Sandy used to be this Sandman. If Jack tries to destroy Pitch’s shell, he’ll hurt who Sandy used to be. And that—he can’t do that.  
  
The Sandman shows Jack hands covered in black grains and Jack’s stomach roils. “Look!” the Sandman says happily. “It’s dissolving! And there were only a few scratches on the surface, not nearly deep enough to cause damage, so they must be all right! It won’t take long to get them out at all!”  
  
The thought horrifies Jack, but maybe that helps the Sandman, because a whole lot of black sand falls off the sphere and it wobbles. This doesn’t calm Jack at all. At least the Sandman’s smiling, though, and Jack thinks he maybe sees him brush tears from the corner of his eye. He rubs at the crumbling sphere, getting black sand everywhere, and Jack thinks he should help, but he can’t, not with the vision of Sandy getting covered in black sand filling his mind like hurricane winds, and it doesn’t matter that this situation is different, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, he’s frozen in the terror of the past and then—  
  
There’s a crack, and a flash of dim, blue-violet light.  
  
When Jack can see again, it’s by Sandy’s golden glow. In the center of the rapidly crumbling shell, lies—not Pitch. Oh, yes, he’s tall and long-limbed and thin, but, like the Sandman, his proportions are more human now, as is the shape of his skull. There’s more curl in his hair, too, and he’s got eyebrows. The warm gray of his skin looks like a color now, not just the absence of it. He’s wearing a robe sort of like Pitch’s but more like the Sandman’s, save that it’s dyed like a starry night sky.  
  
The Sandman reaches for his hand and Jack knows he should go.  
  
The fearbringer opens his eyes and Jack knows he should go.  
  
The fearbringer’s eyes meet the Sandman’s, and the Sandman pulls him up to his knees, and kneels before him, and Jack knows he should go.  
  
“Guess I killed you, then. I’m not surprised someone killed me for that,” the fearbringer says in Pitch’s voice, and Jack knows he _must_ go.  
  
The fearbringer takes the Sandman’s face in his hands and bends down for a tentative kiss that the Sandman eagerly returns, and Jack cannot stay, he cannot see this. He scrambles out of the cave blindly, taking no leave. They aren’t paying attention.  
  
The fissure feels huge and free and bright, Jack gasps in the freezing air before hitting the icy wall with his fist. Did the Sandman bring him here just to be afraid and help the fearbringer hatch? No, he had brought him here to see how things really were, how they could be, to help him understand, and maybe he understands, but he isn’t helped. He isn’t helped, he isn’t helped, and he can’t stay and wait for them. He can’t wait, and imagine, and see them coming out of the cave holding hands because they look different and they are different but not different _enough_ and he can’t see them touch, not with what he saw Pitch do to Sandy. Not when he’s now seeing Pitch do what he hoped to do, what Pitch surely doesn’t deserve and he—he can’t. He wants to hear no more explanations; he wants to give no more explanations. Let the fearbringer and dreamweaver deal with the fallout. Let them explain to the Guardians. Jack can’t help.  
  
Not in this. Not when all he wants to do is make a shell of ice for himself.


End file.
